


Where Did You Go When the Lights Went Black?

by vinnie2757



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, Insanity, M/M, Sobriety, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are GAMZEE MAKARA and there's SOMETHING WRONG.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Did You Go When the Lights Went Black?

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS EVERYHWERE.

At first, it was a bit of a giggle, ‘course it was. He’d been crippled in a FLARPing accident, and you’d thought that was pretty motherfucking shitty of Vriska – Vriskers, Nepeta called her, and she wasn’t a cat, she was a spider, one of those black monstrosities that ate their own young and killed lusii if they thought they might propagate from it – but he’d be Culled, you knew that.

Part of you cared, wanted to believe that if you showed pity to him, the legal system might show pity too and not want to piss off the descendant of the Grand Highblood, joke though he was, an addict and rendered useless and obsolete by his own temptation and ill-advice and daddy never taught you better.

The rest of you kind of wanted to touch the injury to his spine, dig your claws in and feel the twisted bone and torn nerves, feel him wriggle and twist to get away and get closer, feel his screams down his spinal column ripple up your arm, hear his moans and see the peanut butter flush crawl across his skin like the spiderbitch.

At first, it was a bit of harmless japery. You were an addict, who gave a fuck, you didn’t know what you were saying.

But then.

But then but then but then.

You talked to him, _really_ talked to him, and you traced your fingers across your screen, sticky with residue of sopor slime and whatever Karkat had told you to _not fucking eat that eat this instead you fuckass at least get some nutrition Jegus_ and you felt each stutter and stumble over his words, the crack of his vowels and the soft curl of his consonants with easy curve and line of peanut butter ass-backwards typing quirk.

The more you talked to him, the closer you curled closer to your screen, the stickier the screen became. The more you talked to him, the more you forgot to eat – never the pies, always the pies – the more your best friend worried about you but the more you blew him off, and the more he called you his worst best friend, affection in the anonymous slate ornery. You whispered what he said and hated how his words sounded on your tongue, but you liked that command over him, though he didn’t know it, not yet. They were his words, but only you could say then, only you _would_ say them. You were his voice, his only anchor, his last chance, his reason.

His, his, his.

Eventually, your best friend had to send someone to check up on you, his blind gutter-blood of a matesprit. She took one smell of you, and called for reinforcement, and between her, your best friend, and his hoofbeast, they got you cleaned up and fed and away from the husktop, and it hurt, it _hurt so bad_ , to be away from his peanut butter font mingling with your royal jelly and you wanted to taste that blood deep in your throat, choking as you bit through your lip to get at his, purple and brown and wasn’t _that_ a motherfucking turnout!

For a while, you didn’t hear anything from your motherfucker of a would-be matesprit gutter-blood communer. You didn’t hear one single trill of Trollian from him, and you thought of all the ways you could make his blood boil beneath your fingers, laughing all the way as you designed his perfect rise to a more perfect fall, and he’d fall so far with nowhere to land but your wide open jaws waiting for him, and he’d go, he’d step off the ledge all over again without Vriska’s tormenting input and that’s a thought, you need to make her pay for that, maybe even thank her before you slit her throat.

Yours, yours, yours.

But then but then but then.

He couldn’t stay away for long, and he said he _missed_ you, wasn’t that just the most motherfucking adorable thing you’d ever heard? You couldn’t keep the goofy grin from your face, and it hurt, a little, tugged at your cheeks, and it wasn’t until you checked to replace your make-up, feeling naked without the tug of the greasepaint in your eyebrows, caked into the creases of laugh lines already, that you realised you’d hurt yourself.

You tell him about it, say you don’t remember what you did, and you don’t, not really. Just woke up one morning with two massive lines gouged into your face that your best friend stitched up with shaking hands, you’d recognise the uneven stitches anywhere. You could feel the disapproval coming off him in waves – not for your best friend, though you don’t know why he didn’t just dunk you face-first into your recuparacoon, that’d heal the wounds up nicely, oh wait, addict, of course, you couldn’t be motherfucking _trusted_ – but for you, for getting yourself so addicted to it that you couldn’t be trusted.

 _This is why we can’t have nice things, we can’t be trusted. We hurt and maim and kill and destroy and we turn ever last motherfucking thing beneath us to ash because it’s all we know and don’t you know, you’ll be ash too, in the end._

But he says nothing, like a good gutter-blood, he knows his place, and you smile at that, scars hidden behind greasepaint enough that you almost look normal. Your eyelids are heavy, but you won’t let them fall, made of stubborn will and little else.

You grow, he learns, and then.

And then and then and then.

Karkat brings you to the veil, and motherfuckers, that’s sweet. That’s absolutely _perfect_. You’ve never been so happy, you can _be_ at last.

And then and then and then.

You want to slit Vriska’s throat, but mother _fuck_ , shit’s already hit the fan and there’s not much you can do but stand back and be the judge and the jury and as a subjugglator you aren’t the executioner, that’s your best friend’s job if you knew where he was, not yours, but you want to kill her, you want to feel her blueberry blood drip through your fingers, paint a picture on the wall with it, the rise and fall of the spider, dying alone and unloved as she’d been born, manipulating and fucked to high heaven, and there was no salvation for trolls like her.

Tavros was dead.

You don’t know what to think of that. You want to say; good. He was a lowblood and the lowbloods were going to be the first to go.

You want to say; bad, you were red for him, you were so red that he wasn’t sure you understood what it meant.

You want to say; good, it saved you the hassle of killing him yourself.

You want to say; bad, you wanted the feel of his bones giving way beneath your feet as you danced barefoot in the pitter-patter of his blood as it splattered across the walls, every which way in a lawn-wetting device’s shower.

But she got there first, and he’d made a motherfucking _mistake_ trying to take her on, because peanut butter low-bloods would never beat blueberry high-bloods without the luck on their side, and Vriska always liked to claim that she had all of the luck, and maybe you could believe that, but you could crush her windchute beneath your fingertips and laugh at how the spindly bones were enough to tear through her skin, hardened with vitriolic manipulation, and wasn’t it the higher-blood’s duty to protect – avenge, revenge, kill her, kill them all, paint the walls with their blood, he’s dead, dead, dead – the lower-blood matesprit? Wasn’t it your motherfucking _right_ to destroy her for her indiscretion?

Killing the matesprit of her superior? Oh, Vriska, how far you’ve fallen.

Terezi makes mistakes, of course she makes mistakes, but that’s not important, it doesn’t matter, it’s not your motherfucking business what your legislacerating sister gets up to in her dumb low-blood quest for vengeance. It’s not like you give a fuck what the silly bitches do in their never-ending, motherfucking _pointless_ quest to destroy each other.

All you care about is that Vriska pays, that her blood is painted across your walls and across your eyes, and you aren’t blind anymore, you can _see_ , you _understand_ what it meant.

After your fight with the Black King, your Tyrian sister came and folded herself into your body, fitting her legs neatly under your bent knees, tucking her head under your chin. Her claws picked drying blood from your skin as you dropped your arms around her, and you sat there for a while in the silence, your best friend halfway across the battleground, cursing up a storm whilst Kanaya tried to calm him down, and shouldn’t that be your job, isn’t that what a motherfucking _best friend_ was meant to do? Shouldn’t you be out there, hand in his hair tangled tight, wrenching his head back to bear his throat and spill his blood and what fucking _colour was it anyway?_

“It doesn’t get any easier,” Feferi whispered.

You made a noise in the back of your throat, a question and an answer, and maybe a little bit of panic. The rage burns under your skin, closer to the surface now, close enough that you want to claw your skin _off_ , just to let the rage out, make it all go away and you were so tired, you just wanted to _sleep_ , but your matesprit – he was in _danger_ he wasn’t _suited for the game_ only it wasn’t a game anymore was it it was life-or-death and life before this was only play-pretend of danger this is was the real thing and you had to be on your game you didn’t have _time_ for fear – you had to keep an eye on him. You think she might understand that, her fingers soft about your arm, your muscles locked with the effort to keep your motherfucking chill on when all you want to do is _kill, kill, kill, kill them all make them pay make them bleed you can’t be stopped you are as a God_.

“Being so high on the hemospectrum,” she said. “It’s hard. Nobody who isn’t up here with us gets it, and even then.” Her fin rubbed raw against your throat as she shook her head. “You’re not alone. I know what it feels like.” She put the length of her hand – and it’s dainty, it’s really dainty, too dainty, you could snap her in half like a twig if she wasn’t Tyrian and capable of snapping you like a twig, because you are, you’re nothing, you are the ash beneath her fingers as she watches the world burn and laughs it away – on your face, rubbed her thumb across the scar on your cheek, smiled a little at you, teeth razor sharp and stained with her blood.

Blood, blood, blood, always blood everywhere, stuck in your throat like peanut butter and jelly, thick like sopor and just as sickly sweet, too much hurts but not enough burns.

“Help me,” you whispered back, so low in your throat you don’t know if she heard it. “Please.”

“Oh, Gamzee.” Her face crumpled with the kind of pity you wanted to see on Tavros’ face, and you saved his life and he didn’t know, he was terrified of the strength you’d shown and wasn’t strength in a troll a good thing? You could keep him safe, no one with a ruined thinkpan like yours would mess with a subjugglator, especially not one so high up on the caste system.

No one would hurt him for fear of losing their life beneath your thumbs as you pressed, crushed their throats, cracked vertebrae and tore through skin to rip veins from their places and revel in the blood that caught in the creases of your skin, snagged in your paint and filled your mouth with its taste; something rotten covered in honey, death covered in blood tasting oh so sweet, oh so bitter, oh so delicious and hateful. Your breath whistled through your teeth and shuddered in your chest cavity and she rested your foreheads together, both hands on your face now, and she’d smeared your paint, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care, trembling and struggling to breathe and you were so _scared_ , clutching onto her as though she might be your only lifeline.

She’s dead too, now, you’ve seen her body, seen the Tyrian all over Eridan’s clothes, and you were ready to kill him for killing your sis, she had plans, motherfucking _genius_ plans, plans to make the world a better place for you and her and all the gutter bloods, and your _matesprit would be happy_ and Eridan had taken that away.

But no matter, no matter, you’ve got other things to think about.

Months, years, minutes, seconds, days, hours ago, you got injured, bruised your bone cage and cracked a couple of the bones in there too, cut and grazed yourself up like a motherfucker. Sprawled at your matesprit’s feet, you’d rested your chin on his unfeeling knee, and sighed, breaths rattling. Concerned, he’d spent five minutes fumbling over the buckles for your braces, gutter-blood fingers too unsure and hesitant to just pluck them off your shoulders and draw patterns in your skin. You watched him without blinking, tired and aching and not wanting to miss a second, limbs lax and entire body pliant, _his, his, his_ , and let him prise you out of your sign, strip you bare and lay you out and hiss out a breath at the purple painting motherfucking _miracles_ across your skin, and his fingers were burning with sick fires, cool against your rage.

“What, uh, what happened?”

You don’t remember what happened, even now, with your mind _so motherfucking clear_ , clear as the day you could never see, you could never remember, the memory buried beneath thoughts of his fingers and the constant niggling worry that you’d _never be good enough_.

Not that it matters, how good you are, it doesn’t matter at all. You’re a high-blood. High-bloods don’t have to worry about that kind of shit.

You told him once, how the flutterbugs refused to let you be whilst you talked to him and how you wanted to make his life easier and murder Vriska and give him her head on a platter because you didn’t know what else you could do to make him happy. He hadn’t seemed overly thrilled by the prospect, it had to be said, in fact, he seemed positively mortified by it, the peanut butter gold resting just under his skin in an intricate web of veins draining, slate grey turning to ash to dust, his jaw slackening enough that you could see the bite of his fangs, almost feel them sink into your lip and spill your blood and you could – should – kill him for it, but really, you kind of like it.

“I, uh,” he says, and fiddles with his fingers, and you have to grab his hands to stop him, every cell of your body thrumming with the want of _miracles, his miracles, your miracles_ , and you need to make him _stop, stop, stop don’t hurt me please, don’t make me hurt you please I don’t want to_ before you do something you probably won’t regret, but _he_ will, and you don’t need to traumatise your matesprit.

It occurs to you, as you lounge about the lab with your best friend hurling abuse at the John-human and you really couldn’t give a motherfucking flying shit about him except to take your best friend back, that he’d already been traumatised enough by Vriska and all the shit she pulled during the game, and fuck it was your Messiah-given duty to be as motherfucking _sensitive_ as possible, be all motherfucking _loving_. It grates deep in your digestive sack, sends a shiver of something you hate up your spine, that he can’t stand for himself, that you have to take control and be the guiding force.

But you love it, love that control, how easy it would be to just, pin him down and sink your fangs into his skin, and he’d _like it_.

Your best friend says that you’re all too young for that – the drones would, if Alternia were still there, be coming for your genetic material this sweep – but he says that beyond what you need to do, you shouldn’t be thinking about the best way to go about claiming Tavros Nitram as _yours, yours, yours_.

The thing is, your best friend, he’s like your – what did those humans call it – what was it – daddy. That’s the one. If you thought it out long enough and bothered to care, you’d call him your daddy because he created you in that roundabout way of his. He’d played around with the machinery in the labs and created you and your matesprit and hismate sprit and the sea trolls and everyone else too. He created you all, creator and destroyer, daddy and brother and best friend, moirail and enemy and that was the same thing in the Troll tongue, wasn’t it? Friend and enemy, a click and growl and snap of consonants and vowels against your fangs, tasting like decadence and decay.

In the end, you heed his advice – he is constantly lauding himself as a master of such things, and you have no reason not to believe him _he’s a gutter-blood like the rest of them he doesn’t know a thing don’t let him take control over you he knows nothing he knows everything trust him trust him he’s the only one who knows he’s the Sufferer the Saviour the villain your best friend he knows he understands trust him_ – and in the end, you do nothing.

You just. Sit there, watching and tapping a tune on your braces, plucking at them, stretched tight and hooked over your knees and they’ll sting when you stand but it doesn’t matter you don’t feel pain only rage burning beneath your skin in neon green and blueberry and you pluck at them, pluck a beat that steadily drives you insane as you sit and watch and want, want, want.

Later.

Later, later, later.

You lope off to your block in the labs to think and think and think and then and then and then you see him. He lies broken and forgotten, a crude neon green fuck the neon green fuck it fuck it fuck it drawn around him with a stray Scalemate left in the cold – _cold, cold too cold there isn’t any warmth of his sick fires any more you know already you can’t feel it and it’s sick, it hurts_ – blood pooled on the tiles. It’s that gutter-blood of a matesprit of your best friend, turning beauty into a clusterfuck of an investigation, and you never understood how she could be blind and still behave like a professional legislacerator. It makes no sense. It almost, almost offends you, if you cared enough.

Because it was beautiful, his limbs splayed out and palms up, fingers curled, eyes wide open and smooth features, so young and so innocent, curled with rigor mortis and shock, his ever-present smile still lingering in the creases of laughter lines, and those were your laughter lines, from all the times you’d made him laugh and you’d done it all for him, everything had been for him and now he wasn’t here to appreciate your jokes, just your felt-suited bro and again with green, someone would almost think it was trying to tell you something but you just _don’t give a motherfucking fuck_. There is a gaping hole in his chest from his lance, and you can taste peanut butter on your lips already, feel it slick on your tongue and it’s beautiful.

He was beautiful. Always beautiful.

You comb your fingers through his hair, Cal laughing on your shoulders, teasing out the tangles and scratching at the unshorn hair at the base of his horns and behind the too-delicate curve and point of his ears. It feels wrong that he’s been left here on his own, and you should have expected as much from Terezi, but you make a note to tell her about it when you give her her shades back. She kind of has a point, red is a very nice colour.

Not as beautiful as chocolate but that’s personal differentiation isn’t it, and therefore neither here nor there. You have your opinion, she has hers.

You decide to take him back to the lab, and you’ll show your best friend what you did, and he’ll be proud of you for it, because it’s not nice to leave people on their own and soon your best friend and his matesprit will be with everyone else too, and then, and then, and then, you’ll join them too.

One big happy family.

You don’t get back to the lab in the end, but you’ve added two more trolls to your family, and Tav – he’s not alone any more, he’s got company till you can join him and be _his, his, his_ – and you find the rest back where you started, which is cool, you’re chill with that. It’s just motherfucking _peachy_.

You kind of miss him, Tavros, you mean. You miss the toothy smiles he used to shoot you on the sly like, eyebrows slanted with embarrassment, slate cheeks marked with a chocolate flush, and you wanted to lick the colour straight off, taste the rainbow in his veins.

When you write to Nepeta – oh you know your sis is there, watching, you can think like Equius, it isn’t hard, of course he’d send her somewhere only Karkat would be able to fit – you have to use the wall to keep yourself upright. Your best friend banned sleep, right, and the hornpile thing was a joke, you weren’t serious about that, he needed to lighten up, your best friend, he’d kill himself if he kept on like that _but that was okay, you’d bring him into the fold first and he’d be okay you’d choke him with his own hate and it would be beautiful to see his eyes turn white as the lids fell shut his teeth flashing in a smile of gratitude thank you thank you thank you for all that you did daddy you made me such a better person here’s my present to you daddy_ – and you haven’t slept for a while, it’s hard to keep yourself upright, it’s hard to focus your eyes long enough to see what you’re writing. It’s like you’re looking through a fisheye glass.

(Later, Nepeta will tell you that your pupils were mismatched, your blinks uneven. You aren’t sure what this means, but you think you were burning from the inside out, your rage eating you alive and that was fine, too.)

The thing is. The thing is. The thing is.

Your best friend shows you his stabs.

He misses the vital bits deep inside you, all your tickers and pumps and sacks. It misses everything you need to stay alive, glances off your bone cage and skims your arm. You crumple against him, every last drop of energy gone with the _drip drip drip always dripping stop being such a drip grow up and grow a pair grow a pair of what I don’t understand what does that mean you’re such a stoner its embarrassing _and he barely manages to hold you up, you’re so much bigger than he is, over a head taller and broader too, even though you’re so thin, like some kind of monster hiding in a forest waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for what?__

 _You don’t know._

 _He buries his face in your neck, fingers curling tight in the back of your sign, trying desperately to keep you upright, but it was hard, and eventually your weight, slight though it was, pulled him down, and you sat in a tangled heap on the floor, clinging desperately and there’s purple all over him, your purple, shaded and darkened by his anonymous sign and oh, he’s red, that’s cool, he’s a freak, _freak, freak, freak_ , just like you, twisted and warped and that’s what Feferi was trying to change and Eridan had taken her out and you wanted to take him out and Tavros was gone and you didn’t know what to do and your best friend could only do so much to keep you safe._

In the end, you picked Tavros up by his horns, hoisted him onto your shoulder, wet with your blood and Karkat’s tears, and already with Tavros’ blood, and you adjusted him so you were cheek-to-cheek, your eyes level, and you show him all the things he couldn’t see, even when that _peasantblood_ made him robotic legs and _why would he do that there was nothing in it for him you’d have done if you could you should have done it but your hands are shaking they’re trembling so badly and you just can’t hold it still long enough to piece the broken pieces back together and you just want to help and all you’ve ever done is destroy everything turns to ash beneath your fingers_ he was just so short and you were so much taller than him, and you could have shown him the world if only he hadn’t been so brave.

 _Foolish, stupid, dumb, boring, boring, boring, yours, yours, yours he could have been something spectacular you could have shown him everything you could have made him a Messiah and you’d have worshipped him as one taken him deep and swallowed him whole loved him like you loved life and life was beautiful and everything would be okay it’d be just fine you’ll see._

You find your way back to your block, and settle in a pile of trophies, your fingers back in Tavros’ hair, and you rest your cheek on his temple.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him, lips on his hairline, smearing make-up and blood and tears into the short fuzz and across ashen skin. “It’ll be just fine in the end, you’ll see. We’ll all be okay. One big happy family. You and me and Karkat and Nep-sis and Fef-sis, and everybody else, and I’ll make you so happy, you’ll see.”

He smiles blandly up at you, white eyes seeing a happier time for you both.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write more sober!GamTav after a previous ficlet on the matter, and so wrote this under Holly's watchful eye.
> 
> If any of you read it on FFN you'll notice I changed a few things and added a paragraph.
> 
> I've been procrastinating about putting this up for ages now. I'm really kind of worried that you're going to hate me for it.


End file.
